You where discussing Scapegoat a couple of weeks ago. For me has been a hit and a miss like some of you said, but a couple of times i've managed to win a game out of nowhere with it and a second trigger of Malakir Bloodwitch I know is not the most consistent thing in the world and saving mana to cast it sucks. I guess it's next in line to get the cut for me.
I'm really looking forward to try out Scheming Symmetry and i think it's value might depend on your playstyle and meta. I like to get political in a table and you can use it to get another player to do something that you want like removing some troublesome permanent while you get your wincon or draw engine. I think if you like politics and your meta is open to that kind of stuff is a very good budget and low cmc tutor.
I am planning to transition most of my decks over to MTGNexus shortly but I have been slow in doing so. I just wanted to comment that I managed to do a little testing yesterday and I wanted to say that Yawgmoth was freaking amazing. Getting board control, a sac outlet, and draw all in one effect is really sweet. He throws off combat math entirely and so far, my experience has been all positive for him in this deck. It felt like as soon as I got him, I was in full control of the board moving forward.
I happened to have also gotten Cordial Vampire in play at the same time. It was good with a sac outlet for sure. The game spiraled out of control quickly as my vamps spun up in size while drawing and killing my opponents creatures.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I have added my deck to Aether Hub. It has a nice visual presentation and I like the user interface. My "maybeboard" is just a list of the 31 cards where my deck differs from what you have posted thus far. You can find it here.
Apart from my lack of fast tutors, fast mana rocks, and going full tribal, I wanted to talk about a few cards:
Reconnaissance
I do not own this. I doubt that I ever will. What would you suggest as a replacement? I see that you have cut both Cover of Darkness and Dolmen Gate from your list. Would either of those be a suitable replacement for the foreseeable future, or would something else like Brave the Sands? Maybe something else entirely?
Fire Covenant
I have printed a proxy, and like Reconnaissance, I highly doubt I will ever own this card, at least not any time soon. I do not think there is anything else remotely like this card in magic. We have to pay Kindred Dominance and Plague Wind mana costs to have such one sided effects. Even Toxic Deluge kills our creatures at the same cost and life.
Necropotence
I havetwo of these. I know how amazing it is. It is so good that it is generally seen as too good. As a result, I have taken it out of my deck. I currently am using Dark Prophecy. If Necropotence were banned, what would you replace it with? I only chose Dark Prophecy because it is a triple black enchantment that feeds Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, works well with sacrifice outlets, and can even refill my hand at a a 2-to-1 ratio against a board wipe.
Tutors
Because i want to play more of a 75% style, do you agree with my burst draw replacements? Ambition's Cost, Ancient Craving, and Painful Truths for example? Any other ideas or recommendations?
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I am obviously not asking why you are playing those cards, but rather what I can do to live without them. Fast mana and fast tutors are my choice for power reasons, but Reconnaissance and Fire Covenant have me stumped.
"Whatever style you wish to play, be it fast and frenzied or slow and tactical, the surest way to defeat your opponent consistently is by dominating him or her in the war of card advantage." - Brian Wiseman, April 1996
I have added my deck to Aether Hub. It has a nice visual presentation and I like the user interface. My "maybeboard" is just a list of the 31 cards where my deck differs from what you have posted thus far. You can find it here.
Apart from my lack of fast tutors, fast mana rocks, and going full tribal, I wanted to talk about a few cards:
Reconnaissance
I do not own this. I doubt that I ever will. What would you suggest as a replacement? I see that you have cut both Cover of Darkness and Dolmen Gate from your list. Would either of those be a suitable replacement for the foreseeable future, or would something else like Brave the Sands? Maybe something else entirely?
Fire Covenant
I have printed a proxy, and like Reconnaissance, I highly doubt I will ever own this card, at least not any time soon. I do not think there is anything else remotely like this card in magic. We have to pay Kindred Dominance and Plague Wind mana costs to have such one sided effects. Even Toxic Deluge kills our creatures at the same cost and life.
Necropotence
I havetwo of these. I know how amazing it is. It is so good that it is generally seen as too good. As a result, I have taken it out of my deck. I currently am using Dark Prophecy. If Necropotence were banned, what would you replace it with? I only chose Dark Prophecy because it is a triple black enchantment that feeds Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, works well with sacrifice outlets, and can even refill my hand at a a 2-to-1 ratio against a board wipe.
Tutors
Because i want to play more of a 75% style, do you agree with my burst draw replacements? Ambition's Cost, Ancient Craving, and Painful Truths for example? Any other ideas or recommendations?
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I am obviously not asking why you are playing those cards, but rather what I can do to live without them. Fast mana and fast tutors are my choice for power reasons, but Reconnaissance and Fire Covenant have me stumped.
I have never really been great at suggesting budget replacement cards. Generally speaking the best option is just to run good cards rather than trying to direct replace cards. I don't think that its wrong to try out and see what your preference is for evasion effects. In the end I just found that Recon was the effect that personally worked for me being in part due to the cheap cost and ability to be offensive and defensive. I think that Dolmen Gate is probably still reasonable and not something that I would say I got the chance to sufficiently test.
All this said, I don't think there is ever a problem just jamming more vampires and draw in the list. Its possible to pick up some more equipment and go the direction of equipment tutoring using a little more reliance on Skullclamp (not sure what your plans are entirely with tutors). I recently shifted back towards some sacrifice effects and am still testing that but if you do run some more sac effects, Heirloom Blade might be an interesting equipment to test further which would also go further to adding more equipment tutors (assuming you want equip tutors). In general, I would just add more cheap vampires and draw. I don't overly like the draw 2-3 card effects for this deck myself but if I were going to run them I would probably run Painful Truths and then move to the draw 2 like Night's Whisper and Sign in Blood. Read the Bones is also in my mind better than the 4 mana draw 3 effects.
In my mind, 75% commander has nothing to do with tutors. 75% commander has everything to do with being optimal which comes down to CEDH. In my mind a 100% deck plans to combo win in the first 1-6 turns or deprive opponents of resources to play like lands. Any deck relying on combat and not making infinite tokens or something of the sort to win is already 75% because they are using less optimal means to win. With many cEDH decks, the number of opponents has nothing to do with how many turns it will take for you to win if not interrupted.
I also think that 75% commander means many different things to different people though. I have always considered 75% commander to be hindering itself to not being tuned combo (aka the most efficient way of winning). To be honest though I really only heard of 75% commander maybe six months ago lol.
First of all, thanks again for the reply and being so active in this thread. It is appreciated, and I hope my questions and your answers can help other people who might want to build on a budget.
Secondly, I do not want to derail the thread, but I would like to reply to a few points that are of interest to me and get your views.
Quote from ISBPathfinder »
To be honest though I really only heard of 75% commander maybe six months ago lol
Yeah, I had heard about it and read the initial article in 2014 and also watched The Command Zone episode where Jason Alt was brought on as a guest, but I just generally understood it as a way to build the deck closer to the "intent" or "philosophy" of Commander as presented by Sheldon and the EDHRC. However, it was only recently in that few months that I have started taking it more seriously, as I try to cultivate the community in which I interact.
I also think that 75% commander means many different things to different people though.
I totally agree. It is not one definite thing, but rather an idea. I cannot define it better or worse than you can, nor will I claim to do so, yet I can give my interpretation.
I have always considered 75% commander to be hindering itself to not being tuned combo (aka the most efficient way of winning).
That is a place where I disagree, and it is an important distinction, as one of the core tenants of 75% is "Always start weak and improve the deck, never weaken a better deck." For me, the Edgar Markov Pre-con is a perfect example of this. Rather than me trying to weaken your deck, what I have done it begun with the pre-con and used your deck as a buyer's guide on how to improve my own over time. The underlying principle of this thread and your deck in the opening post was about how much better cheap one and two drops felt in comparison to "value vampires" which were higher up on the curve. Edgar makes free tokens and when he is in play, he wants to buff as many as possible. As a result, it is natural to want to go as wide as possible. You take on this deck has had me hook for nearly two years now and I cannot thank you enough, as it is possibly my favorite commander deck thus far.
But, back to the point, I do not feel that it is a matter of "How can I make ISBPathfiner's deck worse?", but instead "How can I use ISBPathfinder's deck to make mine better?"
In my mind, 75% commander has nothing to do with tutors.
That is fair to say, but I must assume you have not read the articles written by Jason Alt, who coined the term 75%, as Tutors are a centralized theme of of his writings. His second article on the subject, I Could Teach You, But I'd Have to Charge, even begins by referencing an older article written by Bennie Smith, titled Letting Go Of Tutors In Commander. Bennie Smith argues against all tutors, whereas Jason Alt defends "face-up: tutors while still acknowledging the validity of Bennie's main points.
In his third article, entitled "Leave Everything to Chance", Jason wrote about the principle "You can skew toward power, provided you skew away from consistency", wherein he focuses on the chaos of Cascade, but the bigger lesson is on embracing the chaos of a singleton format.
I am reminded of what Aaron Forsythe had to say about Planar Portal from both a design and game play stand point, and feel that it also expressly encapsulates how I now feel towards tutors in Commander now that I am in my mid 30's (as opposed to a cut throat spike in my 20's many years ago):
Planar Portal
The structure of this card is based on that of the oft-reprinted original card advantage machine Jayemdae Tome. Replace the 4’s with 6’s and change “draw” to “tutor” and there you have it.
As a designer, I like this card about a tenth as much as I like Jayemdae Tome. As designers, we strive to make sure the game has the right amount of variance in it; variance leads to replayability and it keeps the outcomes of individual games in doubt longer. Players, at least those whose primary goal is winning, strive to reduce the variance in the game as much as possible. Things like tutors, scry, and card drawing are used to make sure the same spells come up in essentially the same order--or at the very least at close to the right time--game after game. If a deck can consistently assemble a game-winning combo on turn two, players will do that over and over and over. Games like that get really boring really fast, so we need to fight back against that. The mystery of the draw is a vital part of the game.
Tutoring every single turn has the potential to remove all the variance from at least one player’s part of the game. Once Planar Portal is up and running, assuming its controller isn’t under significant pressure, the outcome of the game is a foregone conclusion.
Not only does Planar Portal eliminate variance, it adds shuffling, which is another way to make a game consistently less fun.
The only thing that makes the card printable are the high costs associated with using it; you have to spend 12 mana to get the first benefit out of it. The mere act of surviving long enough to activate it is a feat in itself. It’s okay for us to print cards like this that do powerful-but-bad things at high costs once in a while, but personally I’d rather focus our efforts on powerful-and-fun.
I added the bold for emphasis.
I cannot overstate how much I love tutors and how happy I was when I got my Beta Demonic Tutor in 2007 or original Imperial Seal in 2010, and I understand how playing them increases how competitive it can make a given deck against the field, there is something to be said about how competitive a play environment and a given game is without them and the dependence upon redundancy and variance between matches. That is what makes games like this and this so memorable.
I don't overly like the draw 2-3 card effects for this deck myself but if I were going to run them I would probably run Painful Truths and then move to the draw 2 like Night's Whisper and Sign in Blood. Read the Bones is also in my mind better than the 4 mana draw 3 effects.
That is interesting and appreciated. I will certainly try it.
Ultimately, I am trying to cultivate my local meta and playgroup. Edgar Markov is not the only deck I have or play. I often lend out one or more of my decks, including Edgar when my wife and I have company over on the weekend... which is another reason why it is nice to play with fewer tutors. When somebody else is playing a deck for the first time, or the first time in a long time, it helps to limit choices to what is drawn. When somebody sees a tutor, more than once I have heard them say, "I have a tutor, but I have no idea what to go and get." Instead, we try to play all of the decks with as few tutors as possible now, and the ones we do use are narrow, like Expedition Map for the best land or Wargate and Green Sun’s Zenith in Roon of the Hidden Realm to get a toolbox creature.
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"Whatever style you wish to play, be it fast and frenzied or slow and tactical, the surest way to defeat your opponent consistently is by dominating him or her in the war of card advantage." - Brian Wiseman, April 1996
I am planning to transition most of my decks over to MTGNexus shortly but I have been slow in doing so. I just wanted to comment that I managed to do a little testing yesterday and I wanted to say that Yawgmoth was freaking amazing. Getting board control, a sac outlet, and draw all in one effect is really sweet. He throws off combat math entirely and so far, my experience has been all positive for him in this deck. It felt like as soon as I got him, I was in full control of the board moving forward.
I happened to have also gotten Cordial Vampire in play at the same time. It was good with a sac outlet for sure. The game spiraled out of control quickly as my vamps spun up in size while drawing and killing my opponents creatures.
A little noob question here but isn't including too many 4-6 CMC cards too risky with Ad Nauseam or in colors without proper ramp or even time to do it in case of aggresive decks? How do you usually go for Necro/Ad Naus draws?
So we can count Yawgmoth as a sac outlet and a little more complicated Necropotence?
Also I'd love to know how's been Judith, the Scourge Diva performing with some more playtesting. Is she worth including as a pseudo-lord or ping effect?
And last thing - I see you've removed Swords to Plowshares, does it interrupt the aggro plan or are you giving up on having too much reactive cards to focus more on a theme and gameplan?
A little noob question here but isn't including too many 4-6 CMC cards too risky with Ad Nauseam or in colors without proper ramp or even time to do it in case of aggresive decks? How do you usually go for Necro/Ad Naus draws?
So we can count Yawgmoth as a sac outlet and a little more complicated Necropotence?
Also I'd love to know how's been Judith, the Scourge Diva performing with some more playtesting. Is she worth including as a pseudo-lord or ping effect?
And last thing - I see you've removed Swords to Plowshares, does it interrupt the aggro plan or are you giving up on having too much reactive cards to focus more on a theme and gameplan?
Ad Nausium - my usual plan is to draw something like 5-10 cards. I don't worry too much about having some 4-6 mana spells so much as what the average mana cost is. As long as the average mana cost is reasonable its not that often that you rip back to back 6s. I haven't actually calculated the average lately but the last time I did it was something like 1.5 mana per card flipped which is fine. The goal for this card in this deck is usually give you another hand of action and then a bit. The upside of this card being instant is that you can kind of have two hands ready. It sucks that it costs 5 but you can get past discard being that it is an instant so its kind of good for two hands of action. I really doubt you would ever be going deeper than 15 cards or so with it but depending on what you are flipping and how much the damage is adding up its possible.
Necropotence - Always draw up a new hand. I usually shoot for filling my hand to 8 or 9 cards personally as you really just want a single land for the next turn so duplicate land draws are easy to pitch the excess. If you draw a bunch of 4+ mana cards its also not a big deal to ditch some of those as when you have necro the plan is usually to full turn over your hand turn after turn. I usually try to keep a backup draw in my hand when I can but with necro you can usually burn to draw more cards even if it is answered.
Yawgmoth - Honestly, in my very limited testing so far, I think Yawgmoth is my second favorite draw option only behind necro. The board control he gives is REALLY nice. It does put you back a little to do drawing with him but he totally throws combat math out the window which is really nice.
Judith, the Scourge Diva - I still haven't seen her at all to do any testing. I am not sure one way or another. I like putting cards through testing to verify one way or another though so I am far from certain any way or another. I only know on Yawgmoth because I happened to draw him in a game recently and he became the only thing in play that mattered.
Swords to Plowshares - I am running a very proactive low responses sort of deck. Swords is a great card but my issue with it is how narrow of an answer it is. Due to that I have opted to run more versatile answers over narrow tempo answers. Don't get me wrong there will be situations where swords can and will shine but with so little removal in my list there can be a lot of things that can really shut a deck down. For instance if someone were to cast Night of Souls' Betrayal (not super standard by any means) it would probably completely wreck us until we got anthems online or answered it. That's a very niche situation of course but there are a lot of problematic types of permanents other than just creatures and so my answer with low removal in the list is usually to have more versatile removal rather than cheaper tempo removal. This is the kind of deck that really only tends to care about things that make it full break so you really shouldn't ever need to be answering value creatures because the answer is to try to murder people before those matter. If you play against a lot of infinite combo decks then it sort of changes the math on this philosophy because I avoid running these because I encounter very little of that in my meta but if decks speed up and plan to win fast via combo then you might need more cheap disruption like this.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
Really I think the real question is going to be how much madness support does vampires as a whole get from this set as a whole. I don't really expect that I would just casually add either of those into my existing build but its possible that a madness subtheme takes off to the extent that going further into that as a focus within edgar could become possible. The biggest challange in my mind is that you need enough good enablers to discard to while still being on theme as well as having the payoff to go there. Olivia, Mobilized for War for instance is a good start on having discard outlets but in my mind we need SEVERAL good ones yet otherwise you have to resort to running things like Faithless Looting and Wild Guess to have the discard outlets to do this.
Overall, I don't really foresee it coming together enough that I would really see it working out well for a build within Edgar. Thats just my own personal thought given its unlikely we see more than 10 or so new cards designed for the RB deck. I forget how many cards as a whole they make for these products but I want to say its usually something like 50 new cards and there is always some level of complete nonsense cards that aren't playable like curses or whatever they pack in. For madness vampires to work within the shell of edgar we probably need 3-5 more filter outlets as well as additional payoff cards that matter enough to be played.
I do think that Anje Falkenrath is decent and reasonable as a commander and in the 99 of some decks. The problem is that this deck is so fast and she is more of a utility vampire than something to help the tribe or add to an aggressive strategy. I think she actually plays better towards a control or reanimation strategy than she does an aggressive build which is why I don't think she has all that great of synergy here.
Anje's Ravager I guess maybe he has a shot. It is draw on a vampire and his size is decent. I guess I wouldn't write him off but I do have a lot of expectations of anything that costs three or more for vampires and he is a bit slow to get started given he needs to attack. Technically he plays into the idea of madness vampires further too. I still think we need more discard friendly vamps to go further into that plan but as some sort of weird draw..... I guess he is ok. I am still far from blown away given its a three mana vampire with a somewhat slow effect but I think its likely that most of the time that he triggers it will probably be fairly profitable to do so.
It's going to replace my mentor of the meek for sure.
I also like the new Chainer, giving your creatures haste is really good. Not sure if I want it.
Gift of Doom can be played early and I can sac a token to attach it to Edgar.
I think Chainer, Nightmare Adept is interesting as some sort of recursion engine you play after a wrath. Would be fun to test although it's probably a little too slow for this deck.
On a fun side note, chainer will give haste to all the vamps that are cast through Bolas's Citadel.
Have you considered Bedlam? Other than lacking indestructible, it seems like a better Iroas. Unconditional evasion for your entire board, and there isn't really a downside since we would ideally be swinging with our whole board anyway. Five-Alarm Fire seems maybe too cute, but it can snowball pretty hard.
It looks probably good. I for sure want to give it some testing. Its not a ton of draw but the fact that its only an upfront two mana cost and anytime we cast a vampire we can throw in a free draw puts it fairly high in my book for testing.
It's going to replace my mentor of the meek for sure.
I also like the new Chainer, giving your creatures haste is really good. Not sure if I want it.
Gift of Doom can be played early and I can sac a token to attach it to Edgar.
Chainer is also interesting. It kind of lets us wildcard our way into our best creatures repeatedly. I am just not sure about the fact that its a 4 cost non vampire really.
I think Chainer, Nightmare Adept is interesting as some sort of recursion engine you play after a wrath. Would be fun to test although it's probably a little too slow for this deck.
On a fun side note, chainer will give haste to all the vamps that are cast through Bolas's Citadel.
Cool interaction, I agree though that he is probably a bit slow for the deck. If someone does test him let us know how it goes.
Have you considered Bedlam? Other than lacking indestructible, it seems like a better Iroas. Unconditional evasion for your entire board, and there isn't really a downside since we would ideally be swinging with our whole board anyway. Five-Alarm Fire seems maybe too cute, but it can snowball pretty hard.
Bedlam interesting suggestion. I guess the question is if you can win an all out race. Vampires can chump fairly well in the mid game thanks to the free tokens. If you are confident that you can win races then I guess yea it sounds interesting. Some of the pay life for draw mechanics might be a little concerning paired with it assuming an opponent also has an aggressive deck. I feel like it might vary a bit based on what you play against and the meta you play in.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
The only other change is I cut Vampire Lacerator. I used that slot to test out Scapegoat though I have yet to cast it. I think Vampire Lacerator is bad and I don't like having to remember a trigger for a bad card.
I gave the War of the Spark and M2O changes a test today. I really like the direction you are taking the deck. How has the new aristocrat playline been performing for you?
The only other change is I cut Vampire Lacerator. I used that slot to test out Scapegoat though I have yet to cast it. I think Vampire Lacerator is bad and I don't like having to remember a trigger for a bad card.
I gave the War of the Spark and M2O changes a test today. I really like the direction you are taking the deck. How has the new aristocrat playline been performing for you?
I don't play this deck a ton because most of the time this deck is a little excessive for my meta. I did a bit of testing right after adding some of the sac outlets in but so far the only thing I can really say is that Yawgmoth seems insane with a bunch of cheap bodies. I still don't have all that much testing into Obelisk of Urd so its still hard for me to really say much about it.
There are definitely decks in the meta I don't feel bad playing this against, its more that my opponents often don't say anything when they are stepping up to decks that I would normally want to play this against them. I played this deck a few times against an Urza combo / stasis deck and it felt fairly good there but while he was kind of going all out I don't think he had that great of a list outside of having key notable cards.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
What`s everyone thoughts on Contamination? It seems like a decent fit in this deck although you might occasionally not be able to cast a few non black vampires.
What`s everyone thoughts on Contamination? It seems like a decent fit in this deck although you might occasionally not be able to cast a few non black vampires.
I guess it would be good if you ran a mono Black deck with Edgar, which is certainly doable. My list contains too many white and red cards.
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Modern
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
I imagine Contamination would work fairly well. It's really not the type of card I am going to play myself but if you are going all out then I think its probably something that would work given the number of black vampires and free tokens we get.
My issue with this though is that it quickly gets into a question of what level of deck this is. If you want to play against infinite combo decks which is generally speaking where I would consider land locking people I think vampires is still a bit tricky to play given its a combat based concept. Almost any combat based deck tends to be slower to kill multiple 40 life opponents than combo can go.
I have always sort of seen Edgar Vampires as a fast combat oriented deck that is good against other combat / control / ramp based strategies in this game and possibly some untuned combo decks. If you want to go all out then its only fair to question how things look vs all out combo decks and I think vampires are a bit slow still on that axis. I sort of take a thought process of not using tactics I don't want done to me.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
What are your thoughts on Embereth Skyblazer as a buff? Unfortunate that it doesn't have haste, but the following turn, it would buff itself to 7 attack, and all your vamps to 4+ attack.
Sorry about the delay, I have been a bit wishy washy with salvation these days.
Yes, I still kind of like her but she is kind of a slow anthem effect. She doesn't buff the rest of my creatures until she can attack which is a bit slow. I am testing out some new things with the sac outlets which I don't know where I stand on that stance yet but I think she is still a bit of a boarderline lord from the standpoint that she takes time to spin up.
What are your thoughts on Embereth Skyblazer as a buff? Unfortunate that it doesn't have haste, but the following turn, it would buff itself to 7 attack, and all your vamps to 4+ attack.
I can't find a card for that card name. Can you link a card? I suspect you are talking about a new card given that there are several other Embereth cards I see spoiled but I haven't seen that one nor can I find it in the spoilers I visit.
EDIT: Ohhh ok I see it now its one of the beyond print number for next set cards. Its ultimately a worse Mirror Entity in most cases. I would probably just run that instead.
Our spells are cheap and if you are actually pushing good draw I can think of a lot of turns where I cast more than two spells a turn. Good turns backed by draw can often be 4+ spells cast in a turn.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I'm really looking forward to try out Scheming Symmetry and i think it's value might depend on your playstyle and meta. I like to get political in a table and you can use it to get another player to do something that you want like removing some troublesome permanent while you get your wincon or draw engine. I think if you like politics and your meta is open to that kind of stuff is a very good budget and low cmc tutor.
I happened to have also gotten Cordial Vampire in play at the same time. It was good with a sac outlet for sure. The game spiraled out of control quickly as my vamps spun up in size while drawing and killing my opponents creatures.
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
I have become more interested in that (now old) "75%" philosophy for deck building.
Apart from my lack of fast tutors, fast mana rocks, and going full tribal, I wanted to talk about a few cards:
Reconnaissance
I do not own this. I doubt that I ever will. What would you suggest as a replacement? I see that you have cut both Cover of Darkness and Dolmen Gate from your list. Would either of those be a suitable replacement for the foreseeable future, or would something else like Brave the Sands? Maybe something else entirely?
Fire Covenant
I have printed a proxy, and like Reconnaissance, I highly doubt I will ever own this card, at least not any time soon. I do not think there is anything else remotely like this card in magic. We have to pay Kindred Dominance and Plague Wind mana costs to have such one sided effects. Even Toxic Deluge kills our creatures at the same cost and life.
Necropotence
I havetwo of these. I know how amazing it is. It is so good that it is generally seen as too good. As a result, I have taken it out of my deck. I currently am using Dark Prophecy. If Necropotence were banned, what would you replace it with? I only chose Dark Prophecy because it is a triple black enchantment that feeds Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, works well with sacrifice outlets, and can even refill my hand at a a 2-to-1 ratio against a board wipe.
Tutors
Because i want to play more of a 75% style, do you agree with my burst draw replacements? Ambition's Cost, Ancient Craving, and Painful Truths for example? Any other ideas or recommendations?
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I am obviously not asking why you are playing those cards, but rather what I can do to live without them. Fast mana and fast tutors are my choice for power reasons, but Reconnaissance and Fire Covenant have me stumped.
I have never really been great at suggesting budget replacement cards. Generally speaking the best option is just to run good cards rather than trying to direct replace cards. I don't think that its wrong to try out and see what your preference is for evasion effects. In the end I just found that Recon was the effect that personally worked for me being in part due to the cheap cost and ability to be offensive and defensive. I think that Dolmen Gate is probably still reasonable and not something that I would say I got the chance to sufficiently test.
All this said, I don't think there is ever a problem just jamming more vampires and draw in the list. Its possible to pick up some more equipment and go the direction of equipment tutoring using a little more reliance on Skullclamp (not sure what your plans are entirely with tutors). I recently shifted back towards some sacrifice effects and am still testing that but if you do run some more sac effects, Heirloom Blade might be an interesting equipment to test further which would also go further to adding more equipment tutors (assuming you want equip tutors). In general, I would just add more cheap vampires and draw. I don't overly like the draw 2-3 card effects for this deck myself but if I were going to run them I would probably run Painful Truths and then move to the draw 2 like Night's Whisper and Sign in Blood. Read the Bones is also in my mind better than the 4 mana draw 3 effects.
In my mind, 75% commander has nothing to do with tutors. 75% commander has everything to do with being optimal which comes down to CEDH. In my mind a 100% deck plans to combo win in the first 1-6 turns or deprive opponents of resources to play like lands. Any deck relying on combat and not making infinite tokens or something of the sort to win is already 75% because they are using less optimal means to win. With many cEDH decks, the number of opponents has nothing to do with how many turns it will take for you to win if not interrupted.
I also think that 75% commander means many different things to different people though. I have always considered 75% commander to be hindering itself to not being tuned combo (aka the most efficient way of winning). To be honest though I really only heard of 75% commander maybe six months ago lol.
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[Modern] Allies
Secondly, I do not want to derail the thread, but I would like to reply to a few points that are of interest to me and get your views.
Yeah, I had heard about it and read the initial article in 2014 and also watched The Command Zone episode where Jason Alt was brought on as a guest, but I just generally understood it as a way to build the deck closer to the "intent" or "philosophy" of Commander as presented by Sheldon and the EDHRC. However, it was only recently in that few months that I have started taking it more seriously, as I try to cultivate the community in which I interact.
I totally agree. It is not one definite thing, but rather an idea. I cannot define it better or worse than you can, nor will I claim to do so, yet I can give my interpretation.
That is a place where I disagree, and it is an important distinction, as one of the core tenants of 75% is "Always start weak and improve the deck, never weaken a better deck." For me, the Edgar Markov Pre-con is a perfect example of this. Rather than me trying to weaken your deck, what I have done it begun with the pre-con and used your deck as a buyer's guide on how to improve my own over time. The underlying principle of this thread and your deck in the opening post was about how much better cheap one and two drops felt in comparison to "value vampires" which were higher up on the curve. Edgar makes free tokens and when he is in play, he wants to buff as many as possible. As a result, it is natural to want to go as wide as possible. You take on this deck has had me hook for nearly two years now and I cannot thank you enough, as it is possibly my favorite commander deck thus far.
But, back to the point, I do not feel that it is a matter of "How can I make ISBPathfiner's deck worse?", but instead "How can I use ISBPathfinder's deck to make mine better?"
That is fair to say, but I must assume you have not read the articles written by Jason Alt, who coined the term 75%, as Tutors are a centralized theme of of his writings. His second article on the subject, I Could Teach You, But I'd Have to Charge, even begins by referencing an older article written by Bennie Smith, titled Letting Go Of Tutors In Commander. Bennie Smith argues against all tutors, whereas Jason Alt defends "face-up: tutors while still acknowledging the validity of Bennie's main points.
In his third article, entitled "Leave Everything to Chance", Jason wrote about the principle "You can skew toward power, provided you skew away from consistency", wherein he focuses on the chaos of Cascade, but the bigger lesson is on embracing the chaos of a singleton format.
I am reminded of what Aaron Forsythe had to say about Planar Portal from both a design and game play stand point, and feel that it also expressly encapsulates how I now feel towards tutors in Commander now that I am in my mid 30's (as opposed to a cut throat spike in my 20's many years ago):
I added the bold for emphasis.
I cannot overstate how much I love tutors and how happy I was when I got my Beta Demonic Tutor in 2007 or original Imperial Seal in 2010, and I understand how playing them increases how competitive it can make a given deck against the field, there is something to be said about how competitive a play environment and a given game is without them and the dependence upon redundancy and variance between matches. That is what makes games like this and this so memorable.
That is interesting and appreciated. I will certainly try it.
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Ultimately, I am trying to cultivate my local meta and playgroup. Edgar Markov is not the only deck I have or play. I often lend out one or more of my decks, including Edgar when my wife and I have company over on the weekend... which is another reason why it is nice to play with fewer tutors. When somebody else is playing a deck for the first time, or the first time in a long time, it helps to limit choices to what is drawn. When somebody sees a tutor, more than once I have heard them say, "I have a tutor, but I have no idea what to go and get." Instead, we try to play all of the decks with as few tutors as possible now, and the ones we do use are narrow, like Expedition Map for the best land or Wargate and Green Sun’s Zenith in Roon of the Hidden Realm to get a toolbox creature.
A little noob question here but isn't including too many 4-6 CMC cards too risky with Ad Nauseam or in colors without proper ramp or even time to do it in case of aggresive decks? How do you usually go for Necro/Ad Naus draws?
So we can count Yawgmoth as a sac outlet and a little more complicated Necropotence?
Also I'd love to know how's been Judith, the Scourge Diva performing with some more playtesting. Is she worth including as a pseudo-lord or ping effect?
And last thing - I see you've removed Swords to Plowshares, does it interrupt the aggro plan or are you giving up on having too much reactive cards to focus more on a theme and gameplan?
Ad Nausium - my usual plan is to draw something like 5-10 cards. I don't worry too much about having some 4-6 mana spells so much as what the average mana cost is. As long as the average mana cost is reasonable its not that often that you rip back to back 6s. I haven't actually calculated the average lately but the last time I did it was something like 1.5 mana per card flipped which is fine. The goal for this card in this deck is usually give you another hand of action and then a bit. The upside of this card being instant is that you can kind of have two hands ready. It sucks that it costs 5 but you can get past discard being that it is an instant so its kind of good for two hands of action. I really doubt you would ever be going deeper than 15 cards or so with it but depending on what you are flipping and how much the damage is adding up its possible.
Necropotence - Always draw up a new hand. I usually shoot for filling my hand to 8 or 9 cards personally as you really just want a single land for the next turn so duplicate land draws are easy to pitch the excess. If you draw a bunch of 4+ mana cards its also not a big deal to ditch some of those as when you have necro the plan is usually to full turn over your hand turn after turn. I usually try to keep a backup draw in my hand when I can but with necro you can usually burn to draw more cards even if it is answered.
Yawgmoth - Honestly, in my very limited testing so far, I think Yawgmoth is my second favorite draw option only behind necro. The board control he gives is REALLY nice. It does put you back a little to do drawing with him but he totally throws combat math out the window which is really nice.
Judith, the Scourge Diva - I still haven't seen her at all to do any testing. I am not sure one way or another. I like putting cards through testing to verify one way or another though so I am far from certain any way or another. I only know on Yawgmoth because I happened to draw him in a game recently and he became the only thing in play that mattered.
Swords to Plowshares - I am running a very proactive low responses sort of deck. Swords is a great card but my issue with it is how narrow of an answer it is. Due to that I have opted to run more versatile answers over narrow tempo answers. Don't get me wrong there will be situations where swords can and will shine but with so little removal in my list there can be a lot of things that can really shut a deck down. For instance if someone were to cast Night of Souls' Betrayal (not super standard by any means) it would probably completely wreck us until we got anthems online or answered it. That's a very niche situation of course but there are a lot of problematic types of permanents other than just creatures and so my answer with low removal in the list is usually to have more versatile removal rather than cheaper tempo removal. This is the kind of deck that really only tends to care about things that make it full break so you really shouldn't ever need to be answering value creatures because the answer is to try to murder people before those matter. If you play against a lot of infinite combo decks then it sort of changes the math on this philosophy because I avoid running these because I encounter very little of that in my meta but if decks speed up and plan to win fast via combo then you might need more cheap disruption like this.
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Really I think the real question is going to be how much madness support does vampires as a whole get from this set as a whole. I don't really expect that I would just casually add either of those into my existing build but its possible that a madness subtheme takes off to the extent that going further into that as a focus within edgar could become possible. The biggest challange in my mind is that you need enough good enablers to discard to while still being on theme as well as having the payoff to go there. Olivia, Mobilized for War for instance is a good start on having discard outlets but in my mind we need SEVERAL good ones yet otherwise you have to resort to running things like Faithless Looting and Wild Guess to have the discard outlets to do this.
Overall, I don't really foresee it coming together enough that I would really see it working out well for a build within Edgar. Thats just my own personal thought given its unlikely we see more than 10 or so new cards designed for the RB deck. I forget how many cards as a whole they make for these products but I want to say its usually something like 50 new cards and there is always some level of complete nonsense cards that aren't playable like curses or whatever they pack in. For madness vampires to work within the shell of edgar we probably need 3-5 more filter outlets as well as additional payoff cards that matter enough to be played.
I do think that Anje Falkenrath is decent and reasonable as a commander and in the 99 of some decks. The problem is that this deck is so fast and she is more of a utility vampire than something to help the tribe or add to an aggressive strategy. I think she actually plays better towards a control or reanimation strategy than she does an aggressive build which is why I don't think she has all that great of synergy here.
Anje's Ravager I guess maybe he has a shot. It is draw on a vampire and his size is decent. I guess I wouldn't write him off but I do have a lot of expectations of anything that costs three or more for vampires and he is a bit slow to get started given he needs to attack. Technically he plays into the idea of madness vampires further too. I still think we need more discard friendly vamps to go further into that plan but as some sort of weird draw..... I guess he is ok. I am still far from blown away given its a three mana vampire with a somewhat slow effect but I think its likely that most of the time that he triggers it will probably be fairly profitable to do so.
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[Modern] Allies
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
I also like the new Chainer, giving your creatures haste is really good. Not sure if I want it.
Gift of Doom can be played early and I can sac a token to attach it to Edgar.
On a fun side note, chainer will give haste to all the vamps that are cast through Bolas's Citadel.
It looks probably good. I for sure want to give it some testing. Its not a ton of draw but the fact that its only an upfront two mana cost and anytime we cast a vampire we can throw in a free draw puts it fairly high in my book for testing.
Chainer is also interesting. It kind of lets us wildcard our way into our best creatures repeatedly. I am just not sure about the fact that its a 4 cost non vampire really.
Cool interaction, I agree though that he is probably a bit slow for the deck. If someone does test him let us know how it goes.
Bedlam interesting suggestion. I guess the question is if you can win an all out race. Vampires can chump fairly well in the mid game thanks to the free tokens. If you are confident that you can win races then I guess yea it sounds interesting. Some of the pay life for draw mechanics might be a little concerning paired with it assuming an opponent also has an aggressive deck. I feel like it might vary a bit based on what you play against and the meta you play in.
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The only other change is I cut Vampire Lacerator. I used that slot to test out Scapegoat though I have yet to cast it. I think Vampire Lacerator is bad and I don't like having to remember a trigger for a bad card.
I gave the War of the Spark and M2O changes a test today. I really like the direction you are taking the deck. How has the new aristocrat playline been performing for you?
I don't play this deck a ton because most of the time this deck is a little excessive for my meta. I did a bit of testing right after adding some of the sac outlets in but so far the only thing I can really say is that Yawgmoth seems insane with a bunch of cheap bodies. I still don't have all that much testing into Obelisk of Urd so its still hard for me to really say much about it.
There are definitely decks in the meta I don't feel bad playing this against, its more that my opponents often don't say anything when they are stepping up to decks that I would normally want to play this against them. I played this deck a few times against an Urza combo / stasis deck and it felt fairly good there but while he was kind of going all out I don't think he had that great of a list outside of having key notable cards.
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I guess it would be good if you ran a mono Black deck with Edgar, which is certainly doable. My list contains too many white and red cards.
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
My issue with this though is that it quickly gets into a question of what level of deck this is. If you want to play against infinite combo decks which is generally speaking where I would consider land locking people I think vampires is still a bit tricky to play given its a combat based concept. Almost any combat based deck tends to be slower to kill multiple 40 life opponents than combo can go.
I have always sort of seen Edgar Vampires as a fast combat oriented deck that is good against other combat / control / ramp based strategies in this game and possibly some untuned combo decks. If you want to go all out then its only fair to question how things look vs all out combo decks and I think vampires are a bit slow still on that axis. I sort of take a thought process of not using tactics I don't want done to me.
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[Modern] Allies
Sorry about the delay, I have been a bit wishy washy with salvation these days.
Yes, I still kind of like her but she is kind of a slow anthem effect. She doesn't buff the rest of my creatures until she can attack which is a bit slow. I am testing out some new things with the sac outlets which I don't know where I stand on that stance yet but I think she is still a bit of a boarderline lord from the standpoint that she takes time to spin up.
I can't find a card for that card name. Can you link a card? I suspect you are talking about a new card given that there are several other Embereth cards I see spoiled but I haven't seen that one nor can I find it in the spoilers I visit.
EDIT: Ohhh ok I see it now its one of the beyond print number for next set cards. Its ultimately a worse Mirror Entity in most cases. I would probably just run that instead.
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Our spells are cheap and if you are actually pushing good draw I can think of a lot of turns where I cast more than two spells a turn. Good turns backed by draw can often be 4+ spells cast in a turn.
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[Modern] Allies
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB